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Summary Information

Abstract

The majority of the Sighle Kennedy Papers consists of notes, research
materials and drafts related to Kennedy’s scholarly work on Samuel Beckett’s novels,
plays, and poetry. Most of this material was produced or gathered from the
1970s–1990s, during which Kennedy worked as a professor in the English department at
Hunter College in New York City. The Papers contain correspondence between Kennedy
and Beckett from 1967-1988, as well as two autograph letters from Beckett to his
relative Harry Sinclair, one written in 1937 and one in 1938. The correspondence
also includes letters Kennedy wrote to and received from other Beckett scholars. A
small number of audio recordings (including gramophone records from the 1920s),
several prints, including four by the Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats, and a number
of annotated books complete this collection.

This collection has no restrictions.
This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least
two business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and
Manuscript Reading Room. Please consult the Rare Book and Manuscript Library for
further information.
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Arrangement

Arrangement

The Papers are arranged by medium and by genre. The correspondence is arranged
alphabetically by sender, while Kennedy’s notes, drafts, and journals are arranged
chronologically. In series IV-VII, dates in parentheses refer to the date the text
was first produced or published; the date upon which Kennedy photocopied and/or
annotated the text is very often unknown.

Description

Scope and Content

The Papers contain scholarly research-related materials gathered and/or produced by
Sighle Kennedy during her years as a graduate student in Columbia University's
English department (1963-1969) and as a professor at Hunter College (1968-1985).
These materials consist of handwritten notes, note cards, drafts (autograph and
typed), photocopies, photographs and annotated scholarly journals and books related
to Kennedy's work on Samuel Beckett, with lesser amounts on Joyce, Dante, and other
writers in whom Kennedy was interested. The collection also includes correspondence
between Kennedy and Beckett; letters to and from and other Beckett scholars,
academic and trade publishers, and special collections librarians; copies of several
articles published by Kennedy, and her book, "Murphy's Bed". The Papers are
completed by a small collection of audio materials used by Kennedy in her teaching;
by a number of prints, including several by the Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats; and
by four boxes of books annotated by Kennedy.

This series primarily consists of letters written to and from Kennedy during
her scholarly career. Kennedy kept carbon copies of many of her own letters,
including those she wrote to Samuel Beckett. (Kennedy had pasted her letters
to Beckett in a protective binder, from which they have been removed and
which left their pages striped by glue.) Other correspondents include: Mary
Doll, Richard Ellman, John Fletcher, James Gilvarry, Stanley E. Gontarski,
Lawrence E. Harvey, John Kelly, James Knowlson, A.J. Leventhal, Jérôme
Lindon (of Les Éditions de Minuit, Beckett’s French publisher), George O.
Marshall, Jr., W. Kelly Morris and Richard Schechner (of the Tulane Drama
Review), Eoin T. O’Brien, John Pilling, and representatives of the Columbia,
Dartmouth, Ohio State, Texas, and Washington University Libraries, of the
Modern Language Association, and scholarly publishers the Associated
University Press, Bucknell University Press, and Princeton University Press.
Of note are the letters from TDR’s Morris and editor Schechner (later a
professor at New York University and a major figure in the field of
performance studies); they are two very harsh critiques of Kennedy’s first
journal article attempt. That Kennedy, then still a graduate student, kept
the letters is illustrative of her character.

Also present in this series are two autograph letters from Beckett to his
uncle’s brother, Harry Sinclair, one written in October 1937 and one dated 2
February 1938, and one photocopy of a typed letter draft, in German, from
Beckett to his friend Axel Kaun, dated 9 July 1937. The Sinclair letters
were written during the time of the libel suit (eventually successful)
brought against the Irish writer, politician, physician and wit Oliver St.
John Gogarty for his portrayal of the Sinclair family in his 1937 memoir
As I Was Going Down Sackville Street.
Beckett’s affidavit in the case was taken on 12 May 1937. The second letter
reports on the status of Beckett’s health following his hospitalization for
a stab wound to his lung given to him on 7 January 1938 by a Parisian pimp,
apparently for no reason. Beckett wrote the letter from the Hotel Liberia in
Paris, where he was convalescing.

Located here is the scholarly work that Kennedy produced while in graduate
school at Columbia University, including notebooks Kennedy filled while
studying for her comprehensive exams, a typed carbon copy of her
dissertation proposal, a leather-bound copy of her dissertation, and early
drafts and a final copy of an unpublished 1966 article entitled “An Obscure
Key to Waiting for Godot” (see Box 1, Folders 25 and 30 in the
Correspondence series for letters related to this article).

This series contains materials gathered and produced by Kennedy during the
long period in which she researched and drafted what she hoped would be a
monograph on Beckett’s development of Watt
from manuscript to publication. Photocopies of literary and scholarly
writings — here called “research materials” — have been separated from
Kennedy’s loose notes, notebooks and drafts. Many of the research materials
are annotated by Kennedy.

This small subseries contains photocopied excerpts of the Beckett
materials housed at OSU and Washington U. — the Watt
galleys, the manuscripts and typescripts of Happy Days
and That
Time
— and Kennedy’s notes on them. Also included here are
photocopies of catalogues listing Reading’s and TCD’s Beckett
holdings.

Contained in this subseries are the notes and drafts Kennedy assigned to
specific sections of the projected monograph. The sections, which are
designated by a combination of roman numerals and letters, correspond to
her outline (Folder 1). Notes and drafts not assigned to a specific
section are located afterward. An undated draft of a scholarly article
related to this project, “A Hidden Passage in the History of Samuel
Beckett’s Art: His Early Notebooks of Watt,
” completes this grouping.

Subseries 4 includes dated notebooks, loose notes and drafts Kennedy
wrote while working on the Watt
project.
The notebooks occasionally feature revealing diary-style entries on a
number of topics, which range from her first meeting with Beckett in
Paris (in the summer of 1973), to her attitude toward the Irish writer
and toward her own scholarly work and abilities. The drafts show
Kennedy’s intensive revision process; she heavily annotated, rearranged
and reworked passages multiple times. This group of material also
contains two further drafts of a long essay version of the Watt
monograph, one dated 1982 and one
submitted posthumously by Kennedy’s sister, Sr. Ethne Kennedy, in 1997
(it is dated here 1996 because this is the latest version of the draft
extant in Kennedy’s files upon her death that year).

Placed here are the research materials Kennedy had gathered for specific
sections of the Watt
project. The folders
in which these photocopies were contained, and some of the documents
themselves, are labeled with section numbers. The assignments themselves
are occasionally unclear — some documents have more than one section
number written on them — but every effort has been made to reproduce as
much of the structure of Kennedy’s projected monograph as is possible
based on the organization of her research materials.

This small subseries contains research materials which Kennedy had not
assigned to a section of her Watt
study.
They include newspaper clippings, photocopies taken from books —
including the published German-language director’s book for Waiting for Godot
— and a photocopy of an
untitled document which details, in English, the changes Beckett made to
the Godot
script when he directed the
play in German in 1975. Also placed here are photocopies and photographs
of paintings — by Caspar David Friedrich, Giuseppe Maria Crespi,
Giovanni Bellini, James Slatney and Hieronymus Bosch — related to
Kennedy’s Watt
research.

Series IV houses notebooks, loose notes, note cards, drafts, and research
materials on Beckett’s relationships to other writers and thinkers. While
these studies may have emerged from Kennedy’s work on Watt
— and in fact some of her Watt
notes appear intermittently here — the projects seem to have
eventually taken on a life of their own, and contributed to at least one of
Kennedy’s published articles and to another projected book (on Beckett and
Dante).

Subseries 1 features notes, drafts, and photocopied research material
related to Kennedy’s research on the connections between Beckett’s
writing and that of Arnold Geulincx, a seventeenth-century Flemish
philosopher whose work concerned ethics and the mind-body relationship.
Related articles on Erasmus also appear here. Many of these materials
are annotated by Kennedy.

Subseries 2 contains notes and drafts Kennedy produced during her study
of Beckett’s relationship to Dante. The bulk of the grouping consists of
Kennedy’s research material: photocopies of literary works, scholarly
articles and chapters, and occasionally encyclopedia entries, on Dante
and related writers including Augustine, Aquinas, Democritus, and Peter
Abelard. Many, but not all, of these photocopies are annotated by
Kennedy. Most of the scholarly articles are in English, though some are
in Italian.

Subseries 3 consists of research materials (including periodicals),
notes, and drafts which address James Joyce, and also Beckett’s
relationship to his mentor. Three variously titled drafts of an
article-length work on the Joyce-Beckett connection allow one to follow
Kennedy’s writing process.

Contained in Subseries 4 are annotated photocopies of and notes on other
writings produced by Beckett between 1929 and 1983, including Waiting for Godot,
the long-unpublished
Dream of Fair to Middling Women
and
Eleuthéria,
and many of Beckett’s
shorter works (including reviews and poems). Of special interest is the
1962 unrevised typescript for Play,
which
Kennedy’s attached note indicates was given to her in May 1973. (It is
unclear who typed this draft of Beckett’s play, though the corrections
to the script are not in the author’s hand.)

Subseries 5 collects notes and research material on Beckett that Kennedy
had not assigned to a particular scholarly project. Included are
Kennedy’s notecards, scholarly and newspaper articles in English and in
French, and a newspaper clipping file that contains articles published
from 1958-1996. Also housed here is a group of periodicals containing
scholarly writing on Beckett, most of which has been annotated by
Kennedy.

Series V features printed programs for a number of events, including
productions of plays by Beckett and other dramatists and for conferences
devoted to Beckett’s work. Also included here are printed materials on
Padraic Colum, William Butler Yeats and A.J. (Con) Leventhal; documents
gathered or produced by Kennedy for her teaching; and a few printed items
(including maps) that she collected during trips to Ireland and France.

Contained in this subseries are off-prints of six articles and a
photocopy of one book review published by Kennedy. Her book, Murphy’s
Bed, and clippings of reviews of her publications are also featured.

Included here are two LPs, one of James Joyce reading excerpts of his
writing, and one of the actor Jack MacGowran reading selections from
Beckett’s work. Three records, which feature recordings of Irish songs
and performances of early twentieth century revolutionary speeches, are
Beltona gramophone discs produced sometime after 1923. “Thomas
MacDonagh’s Court-Martial Speech” is damaged (the disc is chipped on its
outside edge).

Kennedy owned several small hand-colored woodcuts by Jack B. Yeats,
including “The Shanachie,” made at the Cuala Press (owned and operated
by Yeats’s sister, Elizabeth Corbet Yeats), two untitled illustrations
of a seaside horse race, and one untitled image of a village crier. They
are included in this series, as are two Japanese wood block prints by
Hiroshige (the accompanying receipt, dated December 1958, guarantees
that these are “at least 150 years old”), and one hand-colored card by
M. Roberts depicting O’Connell Street. Three of the Yeats and both of
the Hiroshige prints are oversized and are located in map case
14-O-2.

This small subseries includes a group of black-and-white photographs of a
New York City production of Endgame
credited to Alix Jeffry, a prominent photographer of the Off-Broadway
theater scene from the 1950s to the 1980s. (The folder in which the
photos had been housed was dated 1974, which indicates that the prints
were made and/or sent then; the photos themselves may be images of the
1958 American premiere at the Cherry Lane Theater, or its 1962 revival.)
A photograph of a sketch in Beckett’s Trinity College notebooks served
as the cover for Murphy’s Bed;
several
copies are included here. Two photographs of Beckett’s abandoned 1963
manuscript “J.M. Mime” — written for his favorite actor Jack McGowran —
also reside here.

Some of these books, many of which are Evergreen-Grove paperbacks, are
very heavily annotated; Kennedy appears to have purchased second copies
of several of them in order to take an additional set of marginal
notes.

As with the Beckett books in English, Kennedy seems to have purchased
second copies of crucial Dante translations so as to add further
marginalia. Featured here are several now-standard English translations
of Dante’s writings; most are paperbacks, though also included are a
1904 hardcover edition of D.G. Rossetti’s translation of the Vita Nuova
and a 1932 hardcover copy of The
Modern Library’s Carlyle-Wicksteed translation of the Commedia.
Translations are alphabetized by
title and then by translator.

Here are scholarly books in English on Dante; also included are bound
volumes of Lectura Dantis.
An edition of Vico (grouped by Beckett with
Dante, Bruno and Joyce in his famous early essay) and the Loeb Classical
Library’s Virgil are also present.

Using the Collection

Offsite

Access Restrictions

This collection has no restrictions.

This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least
two business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and
Manuscript Reading Room. Please consult the Rare Book and Manuscript Library for
further information.

Restrictions on Use

Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material
from the collection must be requested from the Curator of Manuscripts/University
Archivist, Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). The RBML approves permission to
publish that which it physically owns; the responsibility to secure copyright
permission rests with the patron.

Subject Headings

The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches at Columbia University through the Archival Collections Portal and through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, as well as ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.

History / Biographical Note

Biographical Note

Sighle Aileen Kennedy was born on 27 July 1919 in the
United States to parents who had emigrated from Ireland in the first decade of the
twentieth century. She received her undergraduate degree from Manhattanville
College. After spending eight years as a reporter for an architectural and
engineering journal, and twelve years working for Catholic Relief Services in
countries including South Korea, Kennedy began graduate studies in English
literature at Columbia University in 1963.

At Columbia, Kennedy was advised by Professor William York
Tindall, whom she later honored with an essay in the festschrift Modern Irish
Literature
(1972). The notebook she kept while reading for her comprehensive exams
(Box 2, Folder 1)--part study aid, part diary--shows Kennedy to have been a
sensitive, insightful and enthusiastic reader of modern English-language literature,
one who was drawn very early in her scholarly career to the writings of Samuel
Beckett. Her first comments on Watt,
the 1953 Beckett novel that would become her
scholarly preoccupation for the next thirty years, reveal Kennedy to have been both
horrified by (“His visions are explicitly disgusting. Dear old Ireland--what have we
done to ourselves?”) and deeply interested in the book. Several entries in the
notebook establish that Kennedy was a devout Catholic, one who took her religion
seriously enough to question both her faith and behavior and the church as an
institution. The diary also reveals the extent to which sexism pervaded academe in
the era; one November 1963 entry briefly recounts a visit with a Columbia professor
who, Kennedy reports, advised her that “teaching in a college . . . is something at
which a woman is at a disadvantage.” Nevertheless, Kennedy pressed on, passed her
exams, and moved on to the dissertation stage.

By 1966, Kennedy had decided to make Beckett's writings the
subject of her doctoral study, and in 1969 she was awarded the Ph.D. after
completing her dissertation, "Murphy's Bed: A Study of Real Sources and Sur-real
Associations in Samuel Beckett's First Novel." The dissertation served as the first
draft of her monograph, which was published in 1971 under the same title. Just
before earning the Ph.D., Kennedy, ignoring her Columbia professor's advice, joined
the faculty of Hunter College, one of the more prestigious institutions within the
City University of New York system. She was an Assistant and then an Associate
Professor in Hunter's English department from 1968-1985, teaching courses ranging
from "Expository Writing," to "Women's Search for Self," to modern British
literature surveys, to seminars on James Joyce and on Samuel Beckett.

In 1967, while working on her dissertation, Kennedy decided
to write Beckett a letter related to her research on Murphy.
Beckett answered, and
he continued to answer her letters for the next twenty years, responding to her
questions (to the extent that he ever answered anyone's questions about his writing)
and giving her permission to reproduce selections from his unpublished manuscripts.
During the early stages of her research for a planned monograph on Watt, Kennedy
visited Paris, and met with Beckett for the first time in the summer of 1973. Though
Kennedy's attitude towards Beckett was complicated--as would be the attitude of any
scholar working with a living writer --the two appear to have gotten along well.
Many of Beckett's letters to Kennedy reveal the warmth and generosity for which he
was well known among friends and associates, but which was largely unsuspected by
the reading public.

In the early 1970s, Kennedy decided that her second
scholarly book would focus onWatt,
and specifically on how the novel developed
across the manuscript and typescript drafts. To that end, Kennedy traveled to
libraries to gather material. The most important of these trips was her visit to the
Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which holds the
notebooks in which Beckett wrote his first draft of Watt
as well as the typescript
of his revised version. While Kennedy produced an outline of her book's proposed
structure and arranged some of her research materials and notes accordingly, she was
unable to complete the monograph. An article-length version of the work was
posthumously published through the efforts of her sister, Sr. Ethne Kennedy
(1922-2005), in Dalhousie French Studies
in 1998.

While teaching and intermittently working on the Watt
project, Kennedy also published several scholarly articles on Beckett and on the
connections between his work and that of Joyce and Dante. She appears to have taught
herself to read Italian so as to read Dante's writings in their original language.
Her research materials show that Kennedy had become increasingly interested in
Beckett's philosophical influences, including the 17th century Flemish thinker
Arnold Geulincx and the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

After Sighle Kennedy's death on 18 August 1996, Sr. Ethne
Kennedy (of the Society of Helpers) completed a preliminary organization of her
sister's research materials and work-related correspondence. Her handwriting is
visible on the covers of many of Sighle Kennedy's notebooks, and in many cases her
descriptions of their contents have been retained in this finding aid. Very little
purely personal material is included in this collection, though a reading of
Kennedy's notes, drafts, letters and especially her notebook entries reveals much
about the delight she found in, and the sustenance she drew from, literature during
three decades which appear to have been almost totally devoted to reading, research
and teaching.